Every Sunday, I love going down to the local farmers’ market. Besides being a relaxing way to spend the day, it’s also great to see people supporting local farms and artists! As you spend today relaxing and catching up, check out this great article written by 101mutts about the importance of fair trade.


Fundraising for Justice
by 101mutts

In the world, many small farmers are going hungry and selling their farms because they can’t survive off the fluctuating market prices. Fair trade tries to answer this problem. The concept of fair trade is that small farmers band together in a cooperative, which considers the needs of the farmers and allows them to compete with much larger scale farms. Then companies like Equal Exchange buy their products. Fair trade promises the farmers that they will be paid the same price no matter what the average market price is. We in America can easily become disconnected from the production of things we eat, wear, and entertain ourselves with. The price of cocoa doesn’t make the difference whether you can go to school or not. But in many developing countries that is the deciding factor for children from farming families.

Equal Exchange has made a resource for teachers who want to teach about fair trade in class. Teachers can choose one or two activities from the curriculum.

The Equal Exchange curriculum has four units. The first unit introduces the idea of fair trade. It talks about people who have made a difference including: the founders of Equal Exchange who had the initiative to create the first fair trade business in the United States, Arnaldo Neira Camerzan who got together with some other farmers and created a cooperative to benefit all the farmers, and Heidi Hattenbach a girl who joined Youth Ending Hunger and delivered letters to the Kremlin’s wife in the Soviet Union.

The second unit goes over how fair trade actually works. One of the highlights is a game that imitates what it is like for a cocoa farmer. Beautiful pictures accompany the process of how cocoa is made. The third unit is about cooperatives. It shows how cooperatives work and how hard it is for the cooperative to meet the needs and expectations of all its members. This unit uses role play games and an activity where the class makes a cooperative to teach about them.

The last unit focuses on students organizing change. Groups come up with a problem in their communities or in the world they’d like to fix. Some examples are fair trade food, racial equality, and environmental protection. It gives students a chance to get involved in something they care about. The last few pages provide extensive lists of organizations aligned with the fair-trade organic movement.

We’ve all received the fundraisers that sell cheap chocolate, wrapping paper, and trinkets most people will never use. I think it is a lot more motivating to be able to tell customers that their support not only helps your school but farmers in underdeveloped countries. I encourage anyone who is interested to go to equalexchange.com and request that your school or church try out this innovative fundraiser.

I thought I should get involved with Equal Exchange through a church fundraiser. I really cared. About lots of things. Mostly, I cared about social justice and the environment and also wanted to help my church raise funds by selling Equal Exchange’s fair trade, organic products. I found it very rewarding to provide church members with really great coffee, tea, and chocolate that helped poor farmers and the environment. It often seems that there isn’t much you can do in the world before you turn 18. But, having the Equal Exchange fundraiser at your church or school will make a difference for people right now. It will help your school or church, the environment, and the farmers. And, in any case there is something irresistible about just biting into a really great chocolate bar knowing you made a difference.

Visit Equal Exchange online!